Today the Latvian national team accompanied by the State Education Development Agency (VIAA) left for the biggest global vocational education and skills excellence competition WorldSkills 2017. The competition will take place in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, from the 14th to the 19th October, and during the four days eight young professionals from Latvia will present their skills in competition among 58 countries.
“The global competition provides an opportunity for the young professionals to compete and to demonstrate excellence of their skills. Eight competitors from Latvia have been preparing and improving their skills for several months and are now ready to enter the international stage and to compete with young professionals from all over the world. The WorldSkills competition has been growing and expanding, the competition is getting tougher and getting of prizes is an increasingly higher achievement,” Dita Traidās, the Head of the Latvian team, the representative of the Board of the WorldSkills Europe and the Director of VIAA, reveals.
The competition will gather more than 200,000 visitors who will watch the young professionals and students of vocational education establishments presenting their skills in 51 professions. WorldSkills 2017 competition should be considered the biggest since its beginnings.
The competition results will be known on the 19th October when the official prize-giving ceremony of the competition will take place.
More than 30 candidates were preparing for the competition for several months, and the following 8 young professionals were selected for participation in the competition WorldSkills 2017:
- Fashion technology, Elīna Skrindževska, Jelgava Secondary School of Crafts;
- Visual merchandising/ Window dressing Linda Vilka, Liepaja Secondary School of Music, Art and Design;
- Graphic design technology, Katrīna Elizabete Sīle, Riga State Technical School;
- Web design and development, Igors Novickis, Riga Technical College;
- Cooking, Kristiāna Šteinfelde, Kandava Agriculture Technical School;
- Electrical installations, Andis Lācis, Riga State Technical School;
- Cabinet making, Dāvis Raimonds Rasups, Riga Technical School of Art and Media;
- Heavy vehicle maintenance, Jānis Ozols, Priekuli Technical School.
The WorldSkills competition of young professionals is a biannual event and alternates with the European scale professional skills competition EuroSkills. The Latvian team participated in the competition WorldSkills for the first time in 2011. At present the Worldskills International Association unites 77 member states from all over the world. Each member state is represented in the association by only one delegated institution and Latvia is represented by the State Education Development Agency. The Latvian team has been proving itself on the international arena every year by receiving prizes. In 2013 the Latvian team got 1 silver medal and in 2015 it received 4 medals for excellence.
You may follow the competition of the young experts on Facebook page SkillsLatvia and on the website of VIAA under the section WorldSkills.
Participation of the Latvian team in the competition WorldSkills 2017 takes place within the project “Career support at general and vocational education establishments” financed by the European Social Fund and co-financed by the Latvian state.
